October Cable Prime Viewership

Below are the year-to-year comparisons for cable nets’ prime total viewership in Oct, based on Nielsen data, and a few numbers and trends should be noted. While nearly 6 of every 10 nets that own comparative data suffered YOY ratings declines in Oct—whether because of the return of broadcast series, the strong appeal of sports programming or poor content—MTV, mun2, History and Investigation Discovery blazed with awesome growth. MTV and History have exhibited neck-craning acceleration for most of the year, as has I.D., which along with Military and Science has earned Discovery’s “emerging nets’ moniker for the triad. Good thing, too, since Discovery Channel, and Animal Planet slowed in Oct as TLC eked out a gain. Beset by serious ratings slowness during the summer, cable nets besides MSNBC continued their recent funk, as Fox News was flat and CNN and HLN continue to shed viewers at alarming rates. Of net families, Fox posted a particularly lackluster Oct, what with FX, Nat Geo and Fox Soccer losing viewers. Viacom, however, would likely be aghast were it not for stars MTV and TV Land, as Nick at Nite, Spike and Comedy Central all fell into negative territory. Fox Soccer, Logo, VH1 Classic and Fuse garnered the fewest total viewers in the cable universe in Oct.